A Spoonful of Tanglei
by The Seventh L
Summary: There's only so much UST between master and nanny that a stiff upper lipped English butler can take. /Maxwell/Fran; written for Springkink at Livejournal. Contains angst, dub-con due to use of aphrodisiacs, and depressing themes./


It had been easy enough to find the shop with a little direction; he knew the name and address by heart. Not that a man like Niles _needed_ anything offered in the shop run by Mister Fu, hidden behind of all places a Cantonese restaurant called the Peking Duck House . . . and it certainly wasn't like he currently had any real use for them at the moment (funny thing, all the good single girls in the city tend to stop answering phone calls when they found out Niles was a butler and not a popular psychologist like they thought). It didn't help that he personally preferred Japanese cuisine, but that wasn't the point of the visit at all. He was looking for food of a different sort, and it was not for himself.

The shop itself was very kitschy, covered in all sorts of Chinese charms and trinkets. He imagined it was all a front for the young women who were obsessed with things that looked Asian in nature, all mystical and spiritual. Niles had worked for Cantonese clients before and their houses looked _nothing_ like the shop did. Mister Fu, however, was the classic kind of salesman. He could see the desperation coming off the Englishman in waves and started guiding him toward certain sections of the shop - the sections meant for the hopelessly romantic and the romantically hopeless.

There were a lot of interesting foodstuffs meant for attracting spouses and inducing fits of passion in the one eating it, from special bean paste to some kind of almond cookies. The yinsitang, little bundles of cotton candy folded up into round shapes, were certainly interesting. Something sweet and innocent-looking and irresistible - the perfect trap.

"Very powerful stuff, this," Mister Fu said about the yinsitang. "It awakens the innermost sensual desires of those who eat it." Niles thought about it, and he figured that if this didn't work, nothing would. And he couldn't live another week in a house with so much unresolved sexual tension gone unnoticed by the ones inducing it. He bought the box of sweets from Mister Fu - after a bit of haggling, naturally, he wasn't the most spendthrift butler in the city for _nothing_ - and they came back home to the Sheffield house in a discreet brown paper bag that he quickly moved past the attention of both the children and CC - it wasn't for them, for goodness' sake.

He felt a little ridiculous setting out the candies on a special dish, but he told himself that special circumstances called for special solutions. Niles finished by setting the dish of yinsitang on the kitchen counter in a spot where Fran was absolutely certain to notice and hopefully eat them.

"Ooh, look at this free candy I've found on the kitchen counter!" Niles hollered theatrically. "My word, there's enough here for two people!" And then he exited as soon as he heard the unmistakable click-clack of Fran's heels, followed by the soft thumping of Maxwell's wingtips. Naturally, Niles quickly hid himself outside the back door, crouching low so they wouldn't see him (even if he would certainly feel the strain of it the next day).

He could clearly hear Fran's excited squeals over the "adorable" sweets over Maxwell's muttering about where had his butler run off to this time. There was a sound like candies scattering against the sides of the dish, and then Niles heard the doorbell ring and shouted he had it before running the long way to the front of the house, missing everything that came after (which was a shame as that's when things got interesting).

hr/hr

There was nothing "adorable" about the way Fran was chomping on the little balls of sugar she'd found in the little dish, and despite Maxwell's constantly telling her to not eat mysterious foods with no known origin she kept on eating them and insisting they were delicious. When he balked at them, Fran responded by shoving a couple into his mouth until he pretty much _had_ to eat them and then he realized they were pretty tasty and Fran was looking tasty herself this afternoon and then he realized she was tugging on his tie and looking slyly into his eyes like it wasn't the candies she wanted to eat. And that . . . was actually pretty cool with Maxwell, despite the little pit of his brain yelling at him that it was his nanny and it wasn't professional but that little voice soon faded away.

"Oh, Mr. Sheffield," Fran purred. "You feelin' what _I'm_ feelin'?"

"A little warm under the collar," Maxwell confessed, then finally got her meaning. "Oh!" He grinned stupidly. "I can't imagine why I didn't see this from the start. Miss Fine-"

"Just shuddup and kiss me," she demanded, pressing close to him until her heels knocked into his shins and he didn't seem to mind because they were soon kissing like it was their first time and no one was stopping them. Only this time, there really was _no one _around to comically come in and interrupt them, as unawares to them Niles had pretty much done an impromptu kidnapping of CC, the children, and the surprised deliveryman at the front door and took them all somewhere where they couldn't disturb the couple in the kitchen. Hell, he even put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the front door, with the first two words super-triple-underlined for emphasis.

Unaware of the great pains taken to make sure they could proprerly canoodle, Fran was already sliding her manicured hands into Maxwell's amazing coiffure, much to the amusement of the man under the hair. "Miss Fine," he managed to get out when Fran pulled back, "I think we should take this very precious opportunity of clarity to talk about our feelings -"

"Our feelings?" Fran aimed a poke at Maxwell's forehead. "Don't be _silly_, you know how I feel."

"I do?"

"Yeah!" She waved a hand in the air. "I mean, I've practically been saying it since day one. Haven't you been listening?"

"I find it hard not to. You have a voice that certainly draws attention."

"Oh, _stop_ it!" Fran giggled, hitting his arm and conviniently ignoring what he actually meant. And then she popped another piece of the sweet stuff into her mouth, then put two more between Maxwell's lips. It crunched between his teeth and suddenly he felt very warm in places he was pretty sure employers should not feel warm in front of their hired hands. But it was Fran, the woman he had always wanted but never had the cajones to admit to it, and it felt right.

So he cradled Fran's face between his hands and stopped her series of soft giggles with a softer kiss that became heavier and hotter, Fran pressing up against him in such a way that even Maxwell couldn't go on hiding his - erm - feelings anymore.

Fran looked down at Maxwell's sudden growth spurt, eyes slightly wider than usual. "Oh, Mr _Sheffield_," she said with none of the usual teasing tone. In fact, she sounded downright sultry.

"Are you trying to seduce me, Miss Fine?" Maxwell said, half-kidding.

"Don't you think we're past that point, Mr Sheffield?" She grinned and it sent another wave of heat through Maxwell's groin. "Or should I call you . . . Max?" That's when her ever-wagging tongue slipped in between Maxwell's lips, and all bets were off. All of the jokes and casual comments and side glances and near-miss kisses and everything else had led up to this moment, all of their waylaid passions and emotions between them were finally breaking out into something a hell of a lot more physical as the head of the house soon had his nanny off her feet and slammed against the nearest kitchen counter, hips rocking and pressing into Fran's until her ass started to grind into the polished marble countertop; she had her arms encircled around his broad shoulders, digging her nails into the fabric of his jacket as his hands sought to rid the two of them of some certain cumbersome items (mainly his belt and her panties) before sliding under the fabric of her skirt to do something he had only imagined doing in his dirtiest of dreams. The wet gasping noises coming from Fran as his fingers moved around and in and out of her sex were certainly reward enough, but the hungry look in her eyes said she wanted more, _needed_ more, and she had to have it all before this moment of theirs passed and they returned to being flirtateous almost lovers living in the same house. Not yet, their bodies seemed to say as they joined, not yet.

Maxwell had hoped that their 'first time' would have been in a four-poster bed under the moonlight, a soft night breeze flowing through the room as they made love, at the very least on some sort of bed - another lingering vestige of his upbringing in a very austere English household, all pomp and circumstance. There was little ceremony in this, standing in the kitchen with his trousers bunched round his knees, groaning deeply as his fingers bore into Fran's outer thighs with such pressure that they would surely leave crescent-shaped marks hours later. His hips jerked up against hers and there was a sharp gasp from the both of them as Maxwell's cock pushed into her sex with a hardness both of them hadn't felt in years. As Fran cried out his name in a low shaking pant, Maxwell made a raspy sound of pleasure. Her inner heat was wet and surrounding his cock with a surprising and riveting tightness, and soon Maxwell was entering in and out of her in long, smooth plunges that became shorter and quicker and in time with the sound of her panting and puffing and _oh Maxwell, oh God, don't stop, don't ever stop_ that it was almost startling how loud his voice became as he climaxed inside of her, the shudders of her own orgasm bringing him crashing over the edge.

He stood pressed up against Fran, face in her upraised shoulder, reluctant to recede any part of him from the warmth of her body. For a moment they stayed like that, standing still as they gasped and wheezed over their now-past session of coitus. When he did look into Fran's face, Maxwell saw in the woman's eyes such undisguised and unabated love that he almost withdrew from her side. What had he done? In less than ten minutes, they had gone from best friends to one-time lovers, wasting their initial act of physical love standing in the bloody kitchen. And now she was looking at him like she expected him to pick her up and carry her away to her bedroom for more. He wondered what had exactly come over him - the both of them, really - to make them do this. The little dish of sweets innocently left on the counter were suddenly looking very suspicious.

"Maxwell," Fran murmured, resting her cheek against his chest. "Do you love me?"

The sound of her voice, exhausted but emotional, pushed away any doubts in his mind. Maxwell withdrew himself from Fran's body, eliciting a soft moan of disappointment from the woman. He then attempted to pull his trousers up, tuck himself in, and zip up without looking or feeling foolish. "Fran, maybe we shouldn't have done this." The initial euphoria that had invaded his mind at the beginning was beginning to wear off, and he realized what he had done. "I'm your _employer_, for God's sake."

"Yeah." Fran bit her lip and leaned against the counter. "So what, baby did a bad thing, now I gotta go, right? That's how it worked the last time." She cracked a smile that fooled no one, least of all herself. "Guess it's back to selling cosmetics for Miss Fine."

Fran slowly slumped to the ground, and the sight of her broke Maxwell's heart. Still, he was her boss, and what they had just done was wrong, despite how absolutely right it had felt at the time and that he really loved her in the end and she loved him too and they were too foolish to put aside silly things like who was boss of who and just do it and - well, maybe some things were just meant to happen, even if they came out of odd circumstances and weren't perfect at first. There would be controversy. People would whisper. His reputation would be put on the line, as would be her privacy. He had to decide if it was worth risking everything.

"Miss Fine." His words caused her to look up, rightly apprehensive. "You're fired."

And then he smiled. "I can't be seen dating my _nanny_, can I?"

If no one in the surrounding buroughs had heard their sounds of lovemaking, they certainly heard above all the usual rumblings of city life the loud excited squealing of one Fran Fine, who with that jumped up and into Maxwell's arms.

It was quickly stopped when she pulled back with a pronounced frown and said, "Wait - did you just say dating? As in, not gettin' married?" The look on her face said she wasn't having none of that.

Maxwell groaned. "Miss Fine please, first things first," he said in his usual exasperated voice. Fran just looked up and smiled at her boss - no, boyfriend. Boyfriend and future husband. Boyfriend and future husband and future father of her children (let no one say Fran Fine never planned ahead in life).

She grinned, face still flushed slightly from their most recent activities. "Now, are you gonna keep standing there or are you gonna help find my undies? They're one of my best pairs and I can't see where you flung 'em when we were getting hot and heavy."

Maxwell groaned again, but with a smile on his face. It wasn't how he thought he'd be spending his afternoon - crawling around on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor looking for his new girlfriend's discarded underwear - but it was better than the alternative: another several years of constant sexually charged bickering that got nowhere except a few kisses and an accidental handful of Fine bottom. And it was certainly better than the _other_ alternative (firing Miss Fine, wasting away as the children grew up and moved away, growing older and staying alone with a heart full of regrets for the woman he never could keep). And when Fran dragged him into his bedroom for a second round, his new life was looking better and better with every passing second. Yes, he decided, it was worth it.

Somewhere, among the many groups of New Yorkers strolling aimlessly through Rockefeller Center (which then also included a small brood of easily excited fair-haired American children, a bossy businesswoman, and a befuddled mail deliveryman), amid all the bright lights and loud noises to be seen and heard in such a historic landmark, an unassuming-looking English butler was smiling at nothing in particular. Somehow, he just knew things were turning out all right.


End file.
